"From the author of The Wake of Forgiveness ten remarkable stories that tackle what it means to be a man. Whether they find themselves walking the fertile farmland of south Texas, steering trucks through the suffocating sprawl of Houston, or turning logs into loose leaf in the mills just west of the Sabine River, the men of these stories find themselves beset by the insufficiencies of their own ingrained ideas of manhood. Like Richard Russo, Bruce Machart has a profound knowledge of the male psyche and a gift for conveying the absurdity and brutality of daily life with humor and compassion. Alternately lush with lyricism and starkly candid, these stories emerge from inside a vividly scrutinized everyday of farms, refineries, hospitals, and homes to explore what it means to be a man at the rise of a new millennium. What it means to be a man who can't protect his wife from violence, or protect his children from tragic accidents, or protect himself from loss and heartbreak. Machart's characters have a deep and abiding humanity that makes their hardscrabble lives all the more unforgettable"--